Back to Normal
by everydayImHuffl'in
Summary: Fresh out of the war, an introspective Harry can't seem to figure out how this whole Moving On With Your Life thing works. What is Normal, anyway?


**Back to Normal**

They were bickering.

It wasn't a surprise, really. They were _always_ bickering. It had actually been a bit of a bland comfort not too long ago. They had bickered throughout their friendship as second years, as third, fourth, and fifth – Merlin, how they had bickered in fifth – and through the end of their sixth year and their horcrux hunting days. (Thankfully it was only the months of horcrux hunting when those words were filled with malice.) But the days after the war had been maddeningly quiet.

To be fair, everyone had been. It was a time for mourning, _feeling_ things, expressing and _sharing_ said feelings, and tip toeing around everyone else as if they were all ticking time-bombs. Because apparently sharing your feelings was Something Important that would help them Move On. As months went by, that time for mourning became time for rebuilding and progress and Moving On with the everyday. They were still filled with grief, but they were slowly remembering how to live.

The ambiguous _they_, in this case, of course referred to the wider wizarding world. In _his_ case, the time for being tip-toed around had lasted much longer. No one knew how to act around him. They were all moving on and behaving normally around each other and in the meantime had no idea how to treat him. They all had acted like he was still a time-bomb, like if they said the wrong thing or looked at him the wrong way he would – what, explode? In rage? In tears? He was too numb for tears. And he wasn't the same volatile kid he'd been back in fifth year with anger always simmering just below the surface. (He felt less guilty about that now, though. After seeing how the horcrux in the locket had affected them all and learning that he had been living with one stuck in his freaking forehead, he thought that he had behaved himself pretty damn well, _thank you very much_.)

So, no, Harry wasn't quick to anger anymore. He was more... sedate. Muted. _Bland_. He went around on autopilot – not doing or feeling much for himself except for the gratitude that the people around him were able to have moments of true happiness once again. He didn't really say much anymore unless he felt he had something he needed to say, which wasn't all too often. And no one who had known him before had known how to approach this new bland version of him. Thankfully, none of his friends and makeshift family ever decided to give him up or let him go.

Eventually Ron and Hermione decided to treat him like a normal person again. Well, Ron did. Then he bullied Hermione into doing it too. (He had overheard muffled arguments about it between them a time or two, since there really was no hiding anything while they were all living at The Burrow.) And once they started acting normally around him, Harry was able to act normally too. Maybe he didn't feel quite like normal, but he could _act_ it. Soon everyone followed their lead and stopped the tip-toeing and the poorly disguised anxious looks around him. They started _truly_ moving on.

Hermione went back to Hogwarts for the eighth year program that was offered to all of those who had been or should have been seventh years the year previous. Along with their N.E.W.T. level course schedules, they were all given two classes from fifth, sixth, or seventh year that they were to help tutor in one of their own best subjects, since it wasn't only the older students who had missed out on a lot of learning the previous year. The professors didn't have extra time to add additional study sessions to their schedules every day to accommodate them, so they thought this would be a creative solution to help those preparing for the O.W.L.s and N.E. help each other out.

To balance out these extra responsibilities, the eighth years were gifted the freedom to choose to stay in the new eighth year wing separate from the four houses or to live elsewhere and commute every day. Hermione had opted to buy a cozy two-bedroom cottage in Hogsmeade using part of her small fortune that each of the Golden Trio had been awarded along with their new Order of Merlin, First Class titles. Ron had wanted her to continue to stay at The Burrow with them since he had decided to skip his N.E.W.T.s and start right away in the Auror Academy like the Ministry had offered to all three of them, but Hermione insisted that she needed to stay closer to the school and create a less distracting atmosphere for her studies.

The Burrow wasn't as hectic and loud as it had been during their younger Hogwarts days, but it still got a bit crowded sometimes. Weeks after the war it had only been Arthur, Molly, Ron, Hermione, and Harry that lived there full time, but Percy, Bill and Fleur, George, and Charlie all dropped in regularly. Days after Hermione had left for Hogwarts, Ron had started his grueling Auror training program, coming home more and more exhausted every day, but still with a side-splitting grin on his face. Molly's mollycoddling had only grown to new heights since the war, and, though it came from a place of love, was extremely stifling at times. Harry started itching with bouts of claustrophobia that he hadn't truly felt since Privet Drive and a familiar restlessness that came from not Doing Something like everyone else was.

He still didn't want to return to his studies like Hermione or join the Aurors like Ron, but he decided that his first step to Moving On was moving out. After speaking with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley to make sure they knew that he was immensely grateful and indebted to them for taking care of him ("Nonsense, Harry, dear! You are family and always will be. Are you really sure you want to do this?") and then talking to Ron ("Are you barmy, mate? Why would you want to go back there?") and then flooing to Hogsmeade with Ron to talk to Hermione ("Oh, Harry, I know you're attached, but it really won't be the best of environments for you to continue healing in!"), Harry moved himself into No. 12 Grimmauld Place in Muggle London. And despite his friends' protests that this was a Bad Idea, it turned out that moving into the old house left to him by his late godfather was the thing that helped him with Moving On the most.

Just not at first. Oh, Godric, no; at first it made things so very much worse.

He ended up having to lock the floo to everyone but himself the second week, because when there's a different Weasley, Hermione, or Neville showing up at your house once in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening every day for a week straight — _no_. That is _not_ a coincidence. That just reeks of color-coded schedules courtesy of Hermione _all over_, which completely defeated the purpose of his time alone. However, it soon turned out that his sudden solitude _sucked_. All Harry had wanted when he left The Burrow was some space to breathe and brainstorm. But apparently having the quiet of the empty, dark house to himself didn't help him miraculously come up with some Big Idea or direction for his life. The thoughts in his head all started echoing with too many _what__s_ and _whens_ and _hows _and all these questions that he couldn't answer.

Half of himself missed the Burrow, but the other half stubbornly refused to go back and disrupt their lives again because, despite their assurances that he hadn't been a burden, they were all thriving even more now than they were before. Ron was top of his class in the Academy (where his partner was Zacharias Smith of all people); Mr. Weasley was promoted at the Ministry to the new Head Liaison of the Muggle Relations and Legislation Office; Mrs. Weasley along with a handful of witches who she used to hold a book club with started a new day care/primary school for young witches and wizards pre-Hogwarts age, with free admission to families who took in kids that had been orphaned by the war; George was throwing himself into the running of Weasley Wizard Wheezes with a gusto as he struggled with his grief of losing Fred; Bill had taken a local position with Gringotts where, instead of curse-breaking, he was helping the goblins with curse-_setting_ and drawing up all new wards and protections in the ancient bank (oops?); Bill also helped Charlie get a local position with Gringotts as a more humane dragon tamer and trainer for their new dragons (which, yeah, was definitely Harry's bad there). And of course, Ginny was away at Hogwarts, juggling her new quidditch captain and head girl duties on top of her N.E.W.T.s studies. (It's not like they had spoken much since That Talk after the war where they both came to the conclusion that neither of them was all that interested in becoming a couple again, anyway.)

So, yeah. They had all been Doing Something and Moving On, while Harry spent the majority of his days alone in the silence in Grimmauld Place, trying to come up with something useful to do with his life now that he knew that he actually got to live well beyond the age of 17. He actually had started to find himself missing Kreacher and his crazed mutterings. (At least that would have been _something_ to break up the monotony.) Even the shrieks of the foul portrait of Warburga Black which sounded whenever Harry trudged down the stairs or hallway too noisily were a bit of a reprieve to listening only to the thoughts inside his own head. Now _that_ had been a disturbing realization.

After a month of dreary, helpless self-imprisonment in the _Ancient and Moste Noble House of Black, _Harry started going on walks. (He stuck to the muggle neighborhoods, of course; he couldn't go anywhere in the wizarding world of Great Britain without being accosted by adoring fans of the Boy-Who-Lived-Twice without having to put on layers of excessive and exhausting glamours.) The silence had just become _too much_ for Harry, and he found himself once again feeling claustrophobic even in the giant, empty house. So, he started a routine; he woke up at 7, made himself breakfast, washed the dishes, answered any owls from his friends (or _incendio_ed any invitations from the Ministry), and went on a long walk through the muggle streets of London. He felt more like an eighty-year-old man than eighteen, but that itch of claustrophobic restlessness and panic was kept at bay.

Ironically those aimless walks through muggle London started giving him a new sense of direction.

...

Harry shook himself out of his own musings as the bickering came to a crescendo. (At least his musings were internal and not yet audible under his breath like Kreacher's had become in his own time sequestered away in the House of Black.)

So yeah, Ron and Hermione's bickering was a sign that they felt comfortable around him once more. They were bickering…. He was spacing out... Things were back to _Normal_.

Godric, how he hated that word.


End file.
